Early transmission dynamics and control of COVID-19 in a southern hemisphere setting: Lima-Peru, February 29th-March 30th, 2020

Abstract

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in Wuhan China rapidly spread around the world. The daily incidence trend has been rapidly rising in Latin America since March 2020 with the great majority of the cases reported in Brazil (28320) followed by Peru (11475) as of April 15th, 2020. Although Peru implemented social distancing measures soon after the confirmation of its first case on March 6th, 2020, the daily number of new COVID-19 cases continues to increase. We assessed the early COVID-19 transmission dynamics and the effect of social distancing interventions in Lima, Peru.We estimate the transmission potential of COVID-19, R, during the early phase of the outbreak, from the daily series of imported and autochthonous cases by the date of symptoms onset as of March 30th, 2020. We also assessed the effect of social distancing interventions in Lima by generating short-term forecasts grounded on the early transmission dynamics before interventions were put in place.Prior to the implementation of the social distancing measures in Lima, we estimated the reproduction number at 2.3 (95% CI: 2.0, 2.5). Our analysis indicates that school closures and other social distancing interventions have helped stem the spread of the virus, with the nearly exponential growth trend shifting to an approximately linear growth trend after the national emergency declaration.The COVID-19 epidemic in Lima followed an early exponential growth trend, which slowed down and turned into an almost linear growth trend after broad scale social distancing interventions were put in place by the government.Peru COVID-19 working group